Page 66 of Jingle Bell Jilt
I turn to look at Lowell. “What about you?”
He smirks. “I’m a senior. It’s not like I really even have to go to school anymore. I’ve fulfilled all my requirements for graduation. Now it’s just stuff like Home Economics.”
I grin at him. “You’re taking Home Ec.?”
“Uh, yeah. We eat like every day in there. Why would I not take a class like that?”
“Awe, little Lowy’s learning to cook.” I lean back and try to ruffle his hair, but he leans away from my reach and glares at me. At least everything here is the same. I take a small amount of comfort in that.
“Dude, don’t touch the hair.” He looks annoyed at me.
Keaton is quiet as he pulls out into traffic. Once he settles into the flow, he glances over at me. “You look like crap. What happened?”
“Don’t be a jerk,” I say and look out my window.
“Okay, sorry. But you don’t look great. You have dark circles under your eyes.” He reaches over and tugs on my arm until I look at him. “You’re not sick, are you? Like sick, sick?”
I feel bad for calling him a jerk. After mom’s cancer, I think we’re all a little sensitive about looking unhealthy. “No, I’m not sick.” At least not clinically. My heart feels a little under the weather, though. “I haven’t been sleeping well this last week. The work on my rental is going really slow.”
“Are you sure that’s all?” Lowell asks from the back seat.
“Yes, that’s all,” I say a bit too emphatically.
Keaton flicks his gaze back to me. “Okay, so tell us the truth. Nothing happened between you and the hot girl?”
“Nope, we’re just friends.” I hope that sounds convincing because I really don’t want to talk about it anymore.
“Friends? Really?” Lowell leans forward as much as his seatbelt will allow. “What did you do wrong? Because I can’t imagine she’s the problem.”
I scowl back at him. “Thanks for having my back, bro. Sheesh, with a brother like you, who needs enemies?”
“I’m just saying, she seemed really nice.” She was—is. But I messed everything up. I’ve gone back over that week a thousand times, looking for times when I should have told her. They were there, I was just a big fat chicken.
“In the five-point-two seconds that you saw her on my computer, you’re already on her side? Thanks,” I sigh. “But you’re right. She is really nice. I think that was the best Christmas I’ve had in years.”
Keaton’s hand flies out and smacks me in the chest. “Now who’s being the jerk? Are you saying Christmas with us sucks?”
“No. But you know how it is. Even though Dad’s tried to change everything so that it’s not like it was with Mom, it still feels like something is missing. But I didn’t feel that way this year. It was just…kind of perfect.” I’ve had a lot of time to think the past few days since Shay left. As I took down the Christmas decorations she made, I thought about keeping them and putting them up again next year. And that’s when I realized she had been right about my dad. Putting up the decorations she made would only torture me next year. They would remind me of everything I’d had and lost.
It must have been the same for my dad. He just couldn’t bear to have those memories—memories of when life was at its best—replayed year after year when life was less than best.
“Whatever you did to mess it up, you need to fix it because you need to marry her.” Lowell hits me on the shoulder and laughs at his own funny joke in the back. But his words make my chest constrict even more.
Fix it? If only I could.
I’ve got to change the subject, or I may just end up crying like a little girl. And while I’m secure in my masculinity, my brothers are not. I think it has something to do with underdeveloped prefrontal lobes or something. Regardless, they will never let me live it down. “Hey, I know. What do you say to me taking you out to the Tap Public House for pizza and wings?”
“You’re buying?” Lowell asked suspiciously.
“Yep. My treat.”
“Cool!” Keaton grips the steering wheel a little tighter. “Because Dad is working late.”
I nod, not surprised by that revelation. “I guess it’s just the Barrington boys out on the town tonight.” Now I just need to pretend for the next four or five hours that nothing is wrong. Man, I’m exhausted already.
* * *
SHAY
